Watch French trader gets 3 years in jail, must pay $6.7B

French trader gets 3 years in jail, must pay $6.7B


PARIS - Ex-trader Jerome Kerviel, speaking for the first time Wednesday about his tough sentencing in history's biggest rogue trading scandal, insisted he is a scapegoat for his former bank and compared the penalty to getting "hit on the head with a club."
The 33-year-old was convicted Tuesday, sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay his former employer damages of euro4.9 billion ($6.7 billion) - the equivalent of 20 Airbus A380 superjumbo jets.
"I'm starting to digest it, but I'm nonetheless crushed by the weight of the sanction and the weight of responsibility the ruling places on me," Kerviel told Europe-1 radio.
Kerviel maintained in court that the bank and his bosses tolerated his massive risk-taking as long as it made money - a claim the bank strongly denied, saying he took great pains to cover up his actions.
"I have the feeling they wanted to make me pay for everybody and that Societe Generale had to be saved," he said.
Of the verdict, he said: "It's difficult, obviously, when you get hit on the head with a club that way."
Kerviel is appealing the ruling and says he hopes in the new trial "to prove once and for all that I wasn't the only one in the boat."
The bank says Kerviel made bets of up to euro50 billion - more than the bank's total market value - on futures contracts on three European equity indices, and that he masked the size of his bets by recording fictitious offsetting transactions.
The euro4.9 billion figure is the sum the bank says it lost unwinding Kerviel's complex positions in January 2008. It's a sum nobody realistically expects him to repay.
Kerviel said he is currently making about euro900 ($1,245) a month working part-time as a computer consultant - he reduced his hours to concentrate on the trial.


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We are see the wikiLeaks must strike a balance

WikiLeaks must strike a balance
Editor's note: Jean-François Julliard is general secretary of the international press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders.
Paris, France (CNN) -- Last week Reporters Without Borders released a letter calling on WikiLeaks to take down the names of civilians identified as having collaborated with the International Security Assistance Force and with NATO forces.
In our view making the names of Afghan civilians public could put them at risk of reprisals from the Taliban or other insurgent forces in Afghanistan.
Some news reports and some pundits portrayed our statement as an unequivocal condemnation of WikiLeaks, but this is not the case.
Reporters Without Borders supports the continued existence and work of WikiLeaks, and we are ready to take part in any discussion about the problems inherent in managing and disclosing vast amounts of critical information.
But we also believe that to continue their work, WikiLeaks and other websites likely to publish documents from whistle-blowers need to ensure that the information disclosed does not pose an avoidable threat to the security of civilians. Pointing that out does not amount to, for example, support for the Pentagon's request that WikiLeaks remove all documents from its website or a call for outright censorship.
In fact, WikiLeaks has published useful information, and we hope it can continue to serve journalists and the wider public. We have spoken out strongly against the Pentagon's request that WikiLeaks remove all documents from its website and against the detention of the alleged source of the leaks, Pfc. Bradley Manning.
We've also criticized proposed amendments to the federal shield law that would exclude whistle-blowing sites such as WikiLeaks from any legal protection of sources. We are not disputing the importance of the Afghan War Diary. Indeed, it is more important than ever that there be an outlet for information governments want to keep secret.
Too often, government departments and agencies resort without justification to declaring documents classified or secret to conceal information that is of public interest. Exaggerated and at times unsubstantiated safety concerns have been used to block important information from being made public in the past. The Pentagon, the Bush and Obama administrations are no strangers to these tactics. Whistle-blowing sites deserve, and have, our support.
However, the case of the war logs illustrates the difficulties that will arise when dealing with the sheer mass of information that may become available. Even the largest news organizations in the world would be overwhelmed, and -- for the moment at least -- WikiLeaks does not command resources of that scope.
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